Kangaroo apple

Two Australian nightshades share the name. Solanum aviculare, the kangaroo apple or poroporo, is a shrub up to 4 m tall with blue-violet flowers and orange-red to scarlet berries 10 to 15 mm across, widespread in coastal rainforest in New South Wales³. Solanum laciniatum, the large kangaroo apple, has deep purple-blue flowers and yellow to orange-yellow berries 15 to 20 mm across⁴; the Australian National Botanic Gardens describes its berries as egg-shaped and warty when ripe⁵. Kew gives the native range of Solanum aviculare as eastern Queensland to Victoria, Lord Howe Island and New Zealand².

Early colonists compared the fruit with the “apple” of the potato⁶. In 1834 Ross’s Van Diemen’s Land Annual described Solanum laciniatum, “the kangaroo-apple”, as “resembling the apple of a potato”, mealy and sub-acid when ripe enough to split, and in 1848 Westgarth wrote of the kangaroo-apple’s “apples like those of the potato”, sweetish and edible when boiled, “but not greatly prized”⁶. In 1877 F. von Mueller, in his Botanic Teachings, objected that the colonists had “very inappropriately bestowed” the name on Solanum aviculare, which ought to be called bird’s nightshade, because Captain Cook’s companions had seen birds eating its berries in New Zealand⁶.

Since the mid-1960s both species have been grown and studied in the Soviet Union, New Zealand, India, Egypt and elsewhere, for steroids in their young foliage used in making contraceptives⁵.